4.152 Core III Studio, SP21

MIT SA+P, Instructor: Silvia Illia-Sheldahl

Project Brief: 


Social infrastructure is a physical network, in many ways not formally dissimilar to things like rail and power and is heavily reliant on the shape of transportation. A library here is the solidification and physicalization of the social infrastructure network that already exists, prioritizing public amenities and services. The library is divided into three planes, where public amenities take precedence on the ground level, the library’s archive and media collection is excavated underground paired with a sunken outdoor courtyard that is sort of ha-ha walled into the site, and community commons space is layered overhead. Media, service, and commons are collaged on top of each other, excavated and then re-covered to form an assemblage of permanent, social infrastructure.